The quilt at the last posting.
The quilt now
I am still working on my mother’s Grandmother Flower Garden quilt. There has been much progress. I am at the point where I have to decide if I want it to be one block wider and where I want it to end. I have enough blocks to continue on to the bottom with the width that it is now, but, most of the blocks that are left have the red and white striped fabric. They do look better scattered further apart on the left or right edge. I do have some red and blue fabric that I bought for the quilt. Maybe they could separate the stripes. But, do I want to hand quilt a big quilt or a smaller quilt? Lots of decisions. I’ll take it one step at a time and give another update when decisions are made. I’ve been basting many white hexagons. I seem to always run out and need more.
The pieces ready to add to the quilt.
I just realized that I have five long term quilts. I did have six, but the Canadian 150 is finished,
The Temperature quilt has three months finished and I am up to date on this month’s high and low temperature.
The flower quilt has eight blocks now.
Leah Day’s block of the month has three of the four rows sewn together.
Dear Jane has several blocks ready to bind. I am making Dear Jane in the pot holder method.
Oh, there are still six There is the mile a minute that I work on when I feel like it I have been rearranging the part of the attic that I call the sewing room annex. I found more UFOs and three bins of mile a minute fabric.
I will never run out of fun things to do.
Have a great day and happy quilting.
Quite often, when making a quilt or experimenting with a new procedure, there will be orphan blocks left over. Several years ago, when I looked at the orphan block bin, I found that there were two colorways and wondered how it would be if I put all the blocks from one of the colorways together into a wall hanging.
These two pieces were left over from trying curved piecing.
I had a class with Georgia Boonesteel and made a bargello vest. This piece was left over from that class. I have never worn the vest because I forgot that the piece would shrink in size when hand quilted.
I had a class in crazy quilting. This piece was not finished, but was put into the leftover quilt anyway. The colors were right.
I love making Inner-city blocks. Originally, I was self taught and didn’t know that Y seams were supposed to be hard. They are not. I will show you the original inner-city wall hanging at a later date. It was one of my first wall hangings.
Flying geese, half square triangles, bow ties, paper piecing and , pinwheels was included in this leftover piece. I did a lot of experimenting when I began quilting.
I saw this quilt when Billie Lauder, the quilt designer, was on Alex Anderson’s Simply Quilts television show. I had taped the show, so I paused it and drew the design. The quilt is called “Help, There’s a dog on my quilt”.
It’s amazing how a simple nine patch can be so interesting when changing a few of the pieces. The nine patches are made with hand dyed fabric. The quilt is machine quilted with a walking foot.
The dog came alive when quilting was added.
The second quilt in the book is called Double Duty. At first glance, this quilt looks complex, but it isn’t. It consists of flying geese and log cabin blocks. The blocks are set on the diagonal. Carrie used fall colors for her quilt.
My quilt used reds. greens, browns and blues.
My daughter’s quilt used blues and yellows.
The first is a two sided bag It is 8 1/2″ x 10″ The dragon side is stipple quilted. The Flower side is heavily quilted with gold thread before the flowers were added.
The little purse is 3 1/2″ x 3 1/2″. It is also made with made fabric. It is stippled quilted and then gold and silver cords are couched on the piece. A small embroidery is on the flap.
The last purse is 6″ x 6″. Green fabric was sewn into made fabric. It was quilted using the built in embroidery stitches in the machine. The decorations were couched on. They ae a rosy pink, which is a nice contrast to the green purse.
UFO – I bought the dragon fly fabric just because I liked it and the blue dragon flies was a companion fabric. I didn’t know how I would use it when I bought it. The table runner was pieced, but not quilted. The border is quilted with a walking foot and the center is free motion quilted around the dragon flies. I will keep this table mat and not put it in the give away bin. 
Two of my Granddaughters are expecting babies. This is the first one finished. It will go into the mail today on it’s way to a baby shower. 
I originally bought the cat fabric and intended to use it on the front of the quilt. I couldn’t cut it up so decided to use it on the back. The front is made with nine patches, using all the cat colors. I made two different color nine patches. One was blue and purple and the other orange, green and yellow. When sewn together, It almost looks like an Irish Chain.
Several years ago, I bought a book called Miss Rosie’s Spice of Life by Carrie L Nelson. There are 13 quilt designs in the book. When I showed it to my daughter, I remarked that I liked every quilt in the book and I would make them all. She challenged me to make all the quilts from my stash and I counter challenged her to make them all, also. All the quilts were made from our fabric stashes. Even though we thought that our stashes would diminish, they did not. It took over one year for each of us to make all thirteen quilts. I machine quilted mine and she sent hers to a long arm quilter as she still worked full time. We were so happy to sew the last stitch on this project.
This is the first quilt in the book. It is called Whirligig.
I made mine using solid fabrics with a black background.
Hers was done in browns, reds yellow and beige.
This week’s Gaa – Barge is a very small piece. It is only 9 1/2″ x 10″. The pattern is called Chinese Coins and is so very easy to make. It is made from very small scraps.
It uses an adding machine tape for the stabilizer. The tape is easy to remove when sewing is finished.
Flip and sew scraps onto the adding machine tape. Make sure that they fill the whole tape plus a little.
This is the back side of the tape.
Place a rotary cutting ruler on the edge and trim sides away.
When both sides are trimmed, the strip is straight and even. Remove tape and insert strip between sashing. Add a border.
Miss Molly quilts 